


Like a Bunny and a Lion

by frozenCinders



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: M/M, animal crossing is involved, au where the yamis are big brothers to their vessels, both pairings are prominent, thiefshippers and deathshippers come eat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:00:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23999377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frozenCinders/pseuds/frozenCinders
Summary: Bakura always figured that if he ended up in a panic because of an Ishtar, it'd be from something going wrong during one of his little escapades with Marik.He didnotthink he'd be panicking over Marik's older brother suddenly getting close to Bakura's younger brother.
Relationships: Bakura Ryou/Yami Marik, Yami Bakura/Marik Ishtar
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36





	Like a Bunny and a Lion

**Author's Note:**

> [randomly gets back into yugioh] [randomly gets into a ship (deathshipping) i'd never even heard of until it occurred to me for no reason] [dies anyway]

"Something has gone terribly wrong!" Marik announces the moment he sees Bakura.

"What could possibly be so drastic?" Bakura asks, already tired.

"My brother wants to play Animal Crossing."

Bakura raises a brow. That hardly warrants such shock and confusion.

"... Well yes, it seems like Odion's thing," he comments.

"No, not that brother! The other one!"

"Yami?!"

Now he sees the problem.

"What on Earth would compel him to--"

"I don't know, it's freaking me out! I can't imagine-- I saw a flower chart on the internet this morning and thought of Yami taking notes on it and my mind almost shattered."

"Hm. And you're sure he understands what the game is about?"

"That was the first thing I asked him, Bakura! He said "yes, it's about cats on an island or whatever, I'm getting it"." Marik pauses for a moment. "Actually, what makes _you_ want to play it?"

"Me?"

"Yes, you. You have a lot in common with--"

"Ugh, don't say it."

"You do! So tell me, why do you play Animal Crossing, Bakura?"

"I only--"

_\--do it for you._

"... I like the outfits," Bakura improvises. No need for some mindless cheesy confession; not with Yami on the brain, at least.

Marik tilts his head.

"You do make a lot of them. Maybe my brother has the same interest..? Could've fooled me," he says. Bakura only half-pays attention.

Yes, Yami might have an interest in cartoon fashions, if we're stretching the imagination today. Or, maybe Yami's reasons are more similar to Bakura's than he would like to admit. The question there is, who's the poor sap who is forcing Yami's heart to thaw like Marik has been unwittingly doing to Bakura?

Luckily, it's usually Marik who visits Bakura, and whenever it's the other way around, they pick a location other than Marik's home. Bakura hardly ever has to run into Yami, so it isn't his problem. Even if he's curious, Bakura has found that nothing is worth butting into Yami's business. If it wasn't bad enough that he's overprotective as hell of Marik to the point that Marik is a spoiled brat because of him, that protectiveness also happens to be Yami's only redeeming quality. The man is relentless.

As soon as Ryou gets home, with a quick greeting to Bakura and Marik, he runs to his room. Bakura doesn't pay him any mind and continues watching Marik make decent progress in some platforming puzzle game. He's pretty good at that pixel-perfect bullshit, while Bakura is very much not.

At some point, Ryou must have wandered back out, because Bakura spots him on the edge of the couch out of the corner of his eye. He's smiling down at his switch, and an inexplicable chill runs up Bakura's spine.

He slides a little closer to Ryou, but he still can't see what he's playing.

"What is that?" he comes out and asks.

"Animal Crossing," Ryou answers-- curtly and without looking up. Ryou never talks like that. He... must be pretty distracted.

"Anything interesting happening?" Bakura asks vaguely.

"I'm playing with a friend."

That shouldn't set off alarm bells in Bakura's head. Ryou has plenty of friends, Bakura is obviously overreacting.

"Ah. With Yugi or one of them, I presume?" he says, voicing the thoughts he forced into his own head.

"Nope!"

Oh shit.

"Bakura, can you look at this?" Marik addresses, and Bakura quickly glances to see that he's stuck on a puzzle. Too many moving pieces for Bakura right now.

"In a minute. Is this a new friend?"

"I don't have a minute, there's a-- ugh, fine, I'll just do it again," Marik grumbles.

"Relatively... why? You don't usually ask me questions like these," Ryou rightfully points out. "Are you maybe a little lonely?"

"If you're lonely, get back over here and help me."

"Not now, Marik."

"When?"

"Not now."

Bakura then stands and nods towards his room. Ryou takes a moment to do something in his game before following, still very much focused on the switch.

"Oh-- nevermind, Bakura, I solved it!" Marik calls just as Bakura shuts the door behind Ryou.

"It's not Yami, is it?" he asks outright. Ryou looks up, startled. Shit.

"Well... yes, actually. I'm surprised you were able to guess that. He doesn't seem the type, does he?" Ryou confirms with a smile. Sickeningly innocent as always.

He's looking down again to give more attention to that fiend. At least Yami can't do much to him through a video game. Curiosity gets the best of Bakura once more and he gets behind Ryou to see what's happening.

"He has Bunnie on his island. I like her," Ryou says.

Currently, Yami's little character-- who surprisingly looks nothing like Marik's, who decided to have purple hair and blue eyes-- is dropping picked flowers in front of Ryou while the latter talks to Bunnie. Oh no. Oh _no_.

Ryou has his character smile at Yami's and he picks up the flowers and immediately puts one in his hair.

"Alright, I can't watch this, I think I'm going to be sick," Bakura says in a somewhat frantic voice. It's completely innocent, which _should_ come as a relief, but the juxtaposition of _Yami_ doing something so sweet and innocent is... a shock to the system.

"How come? It's not as if you're unfamiliar with the game..."

Bakura elects not to comment. Since it's his own room they retreated into, he drags Ryou out by the back of his shirt and closes the door again before heading back to the living room. Marik's game has gotten back to a complicated mechanic he saw earlier on, but Marik seems to have it down to a science now while Bakura still doesn't get what all those symbols are about. Oh well.

He plops down next to Marik with his arms crossed, and his legs soon follow suit.

"It's him," he says.

"What's who?"

"Your brother. And my brother."

The cursor stops moving and the puzzle Marik was working on quickly times out.

"Y-- wait, what? Are they... is... hang on, I have to..." Marik trails off repeatedly, pausing the game to take his phone out. He taps a few times and then holds it up beside his face.

"What are you doing right now?" he asks, presumably directed at Yami, and then he rolls his eyes. "... Fine, "hello first". Now what are you doing?"

Marik's eyes go wide and he whips around to face Bakura, making frantic, vague, half-finished gestures. Bakura agrees.

"No, I'm not! ... I don't have to answer that. I don't know, Rome, check there. Actually, I have to go, bye."

"What did he say?" Bakura is quick to ask.

"That he's playing "a game" and then he asked if I was at your place and I panicked."

"I could see that, yes."

"I can't believe this. There are so many levels to this situation that I cannot comprehend," Marik blanches, well within his rights.

"He... gave him flowers," Bakura makes himself mention. "He gave him flowers and by god, Ryou put them in his hair without a second thought."

"Are they _married?!_ "

"Now, normally this would be my cue to ask you to help me sabotage this... situation, but..."

"With Yami involved? Have you gone mad?"

"Exactly. 49 and a half foot pole and whatnot."

Marik sits and steeples his fingers, elbows resting on his knees.

"Then, what do we do?" he asks. "I don't... I don't want to screw up what we have because my brother decides he's bored of yours."

That's... the issue Marik takes with it? Well, either way, it's a matter of both of them fearing a bad breakup between their brothers.

Wait, maybe he's overreacting. Maybe they're just friends. That has to be it; Ryou has never had a boyfriend or anything of the sort in his damn life, and certainly doesn't seem to be looking just yet. Yami, he imagines, cannot possibly develop "feelings" for another human being. They have to just be unlikely friends.

Bakura communicates this to Marik in an attempt to calm both of them down. Marik listens quietly to his theory and says nothing for a while, just picks the controller back up and resumes working on his puzzle.

"I guess we'll find out," he says.

That night, Bakura has a dream featuring Ryou trying to look up "animal crossing date spots" and wakes up with a powerful urge to punch himself in the face. The next few days pass without much incident and Bakura attempts to forget the whole ordeal.

That is, until he receives a phone call from Marik.

"He's locked himself in his room, Bakura, I've never seen this happen before. I think he's just talking to Ryou all the time now."

"You really do never say hello first, do you?" Bakura quips in an attempt to prevent himself from panicking.

"STOP sounding like my brother, it's WEIRD."

Bakura can't help but laugh. It helps to distract him from how distraught he's beginning to feel.

"You're not going to like what I'm about to suggest," Marik starts, and Bakura can already tell he's right. "What if we set up a meeting--"

"Absolutely not."

"They'll do it anyway, eventually! If they meet up and decide they hate each other now, there'll be less fallout! Let's just get it over with!"

Bakura hates to admit it, but Marik has a point.

"If he lays a finger on Ryou, I'm robbing your house," Bakura threatens.

"Fine, I'll just live at yours, then."

"That's not how it works."

"Yes it is. We'll be there tomorrow? Does that work?"

Fuck.

"I guess it has to," he sighs.

He hangs up and pinches the bridge of his nose. After a good while of just sitting there like that, Bakura gets up to go see Ryou. He knocks twice on the door and leans on the wall next to it, knowing damn well he looks defeated when Ryou comes out.

"What's wrong? Is everything alright?" he asks, all genuine care and concern. How are they even related?

"Tired. Doesn't matter," he lies. "Marik is visiting again tomorrow. His brother is coming along."

"Yami is coming?"

God, the way his fucking face lights up at that. Bakura was right from the start, wasn't he?

"Look, I know you two are... friends, but, just... tread lightly."

"Tread lightly? I've never had to tread lightly with him..."

"It's different when Marik is next to him, is all. He gets uppity over nothing," Bakura de-escalates, despite the fact that he _was_ trying to warn Ryou.

Bakura keeps trying to convince himself the two only see each other as friends, but promptly gives up when he catches Ryou baking something in the kitchen.

"... What are you making," he says more than asks, tone flat and empty like the spot in his head where hope used to exist.

"A cake! I just need to pick up some frosting later. Does Marik have a preference?"

Why, in case Yami shares that preference?

"Ugh," Bakura grunts.

Regardless, he does silently wrack his brain for a hint as to what kind of frosting Marik would prefer. He likes chocolate, but the cake itself looks to be chocolate, and Ryou has berated Bakura that you "can't stack the same flavor on top of itself" before. As if double fudge isn't the only flavor that matters.

"I guess vanilla will have to do," Ryou muses a bit sadly. "It isn't very creative... maybe buttercream?"

Bakura leaves Ryou to his baking and, hypocrite that he is, goes to start up Animal Crossing so he can dig up flowers from his stupid purple rose garden to give to Marik when he gets online. They really do have a thing or two in common, don't they?

* * *

When Bakura wakes up, it's still a little dark out. Normally, he'd go back to sleep, but when he's in the kitchen grabbing a drink, he notices that the cake still has no frosting on it. He scours the pantry and the refrigerator, finding none, and realizes Ryou forgot to go buy some.

So, he sighs and decides to take his morning shower a lot earlier than usual.

"Oh, thank you so much, I completely forgot to buy frosting last night!" Ryou thanks him when he finally wakes up. Bakura has already been home for two hours.

"You're the one who baked the damned thing, how did you forget?"

"I got distracted making sure my haunted graveyard was perfect..."

In Animal Crossing, he assumes. Yami can just visit online to see it anyway, so what's the big deal?

"Just frost the cake before that slips your mind, too," Bakura dismisses. Ryou has always been good at shrugging off his brother's cold attitude, and today is no different. He must be good at weathering whatever the hell Yami throws at him, too.

He's humming as he stirs the frosting, and Bakura retreats to his room just to not have to hear it. While he's thinking of it, he texts Marik "We're doomed, by the way."

If it's not bad enough that Yami's impending visit is looming over Bakura to begin with, Ryou keeps bugging him asking if they're almost there. He's never so impatient. Why the _hell_ is he so enamored with Yami? Then again, why the hell is Bakura so enamored with Marik?

Marik has his own subtle ways of reciprocating, and their bond is one grown over a few years of being partners in crime. They've had each other's backs in tight spots, they've been exposed to adrenaline highs together countless times, and they've even suffered minor betrayals from each other, but they always end up gravitating back together. Maybe it'd make less sense for them _not_ to have that complicated tension between them.

Between Yami and Ryou, though? How did they even _meet?_ Why do they like each other? They couldn't have made good first impressions-- neither of them. Bakura gets tired of trying to understand it.

"Oh! They're here, they're here!"

He's so excited. Bakura has scarcely ever seen him like this.

If Yami ends up crushing Ryou under his heel just like he does to everyone else, there will be hell to pay.

By the time Bakura drags himself out of his room, bristling at the sight of Yami despite all the time he had to mentally prepare, he finds Marik already staring at the cake.

"This... this is what you meant, isn't it?" he correctly guesses. Bakura nods grimly.

Ryou went overboard on the cake, speaking even more to how overexcited he was about seeing Yami. The frosting forms a careful design, and the corners sport whole strawberries. In the middle of the cake are strawberry slices arranged in the shape of a flower.

He's head over fucking heels.

Ugh, just look at them. Ryou is leaning on Yami's shoulder as they play their stupid game, like a bunny cuddling up to a lion; a disaster waiting to happen. Strangely, though, Yami seems oddly pacified with Ryou around. For now, at least.

"Obviously, he's not going to hurt him," Marik mutters to Bakura, sensing his concern.

"What the _hell_ makes you think that?" Bakura snaps, unable to keep it quite so low as a whisper before catching himself. "It's what he does, Marik, he hurts people."

"No, you don't understand--"

"Weren't you expressing the same concerns as I was? Why the sudden change?"

Marik narrows his eyes. Ah, there's that fed up expression Bakura hasn't seen in a decent while. Now is not the time to be finding it cute, either.

""What he does" is protect me by any means necessary. I'm not getting into it, but from a young age, that's been something he's considered his charge. He may have... gone... overboard, yes, but all in all, being generally intimidating is just to help his main purpose."

Bit of an unexpected explanation. Then again, whenever Marik gets upset, he goes running to Yami to fix his problems. It wouldn't make much sense to do that if he weren't willing and able to fix them, would it?

"Alright, fine. So what are you getting at?"

"I'm getting at the fact that I've been pretty much the only person he's ever seemed to care about until now. Now that he cares about Ryou..."

Oh lord. Now there's a second person Yami would kill for, then.

"Alright, fine," Bakura concedes. "I believe you. It's fine."

"Is it?" Marik drawls in a disbelieving tone. Bakura sighs.

"Yes, Marik, it is. I won't worry about it anymore," he says, crossing his arms and rolling his eyes. "Just so long as I won't wake up to a dead little brother."

"You won't. I promise."

Bakura will hold him to it.

**Author's Note:**

> if anyone wants to request fics of any kind, please see me at frozencinders.tumblr.com!! i haven't done any requests in a very long time and i want to write more while i have no work to do but ideas have been hitting me very slowly. deathshipping ideas are especially welcome.
> 
> i have some things i won't write for various reasons, but it doesn't hurt to ask.


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